Alan Summers
founding editor
Alan Summers lives in Bristol, United Kingdom.
Alan’s poetry has been published and anthologized worldwide, including four leading British haiku anthologies: Wing Beats: British Birds in Haiku, Stepping Stones: a way into haiku, The New Haiku, and the Iron Book of British Haiku. His haiku have been translated into 15 languages, including Japanese romaji and kanji/hiragana; and British Sign Language. His Japanese newspaper publications include Yomiuri Shimbun; Mainichi Shimbun; The Japan Times; and The Mie Times.
Alan’s third collection, tentatively called The Click of Zen: Selected Poems 1994-2010, will be published in the Winter of 2010/2011.
Alan founded With Words, an organisation that exists to promote the love and enjoyment of words through literacy work, and literature events. He has also been a visiting tutor for the (British) nationally acclaimed The Poetry School teaching various Asian forms and genres including haiku; tanka; and renga.
Alan involves himself in innovative haikai residencies including one mentioned in The Lonely Planet Guide to Great Britain, and one that helped create a university undergraduate programme. Alan uses ‘haiku discipline’ to teach both novelists and poets, and creates projects that involve the general public. He has performed in Trafalgar Square as part of Antony Gormley’s Fourth Plinth, One and Other Project, and Alan has been interviewed by the BBC on more than one occasion.
Alan is also co-founder/co-organizer of the 2010 Bath Japanese Festival. He is Joint Co-ordinator of the 1000 Verse Renga Project which BBC Poetry Season supported, and Roger McGough has also stated support. There are plans to make The 1000 Verse Renga Project into a short film. Alan’s involvement in renga/renku has had him recently invited to be the new international renga editor for Notes from the Gean.
On March 20, 2010, the equinox, Alan, Carmen Sterba, and Mark Brooks announced the return of haijinx with the haijinx quarterly.
and originally from 
If some of you would like to see me in action check out:
Antony Gormley’s Fourth Plinth, One and Other
Project (July 27th 2009):
http://www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/Alan_S
My BBC Fourth Plinth Interview:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8176398.stm
My Area 17 blog shows most of my public events:
http://area17.blogspot.com
The With Words International Online Haiku Competition 2010 will be up late March/early April: http://www.withwords.org.uk/comp.html
Enjoy haijinx, there are lots of nice surprises coming this year.
Alan
UPDATE ON ALAN’S FORTH PLINTH EVENT
Alan’s British Library archived webpage is:
Alan on Antony Gormley’s Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth Project
Antony Gormley causing interest in New York:
New York Times article: Interlopers on the Skyline
One & Other – Report Update
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It’s been almost a year since the epic One & Other opened applications.
Antony Gormley’s commision was the first in the Sky Arts Artichoke season: Sky’s sponsorship enabled us, among other things, to stream the plinth live to millions of viewers across the world.
In fact, the website has been an integral part of the project, registering almost 9 million hits since its launch last year.
However, all good things must come to an end. At the end of this month http://www.oneandother.co.uk [http://www.oneandother.co.uk] will move to its new home in the British Library’s digital archive.
The website will feature all videos as well as the rest of the website, although the interactive features, such as the ability to comment on videos or blog posts, will be disabled.
You can visit the archived site by clicking here
[http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20100223121732/http://www.oneandother.co.uk/].
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